UK Budget 2006 - Comment
Resources
More on FT.com
Video: Philip Stephens on Brown’s most political Budget yet
The Budget was rather like a chinese meal: once you’d eaten it, you wondered what was there. What will be remembered is the political message. This was Gordon Brown’s final bid for the leadership.
Martin Wolf: Enough of Soviet tractor planning
The chancellor remains a man obsessed with quantitative targets for inputs and outputs rather than someone who has internalised the role of incentives and the extent of our uncertainty about the future.
Philip Stephens: Tilting at toffs is a Scot’s sport
There were moments when it seemed the chancellor had already moved next door to No 10 Downing St. As he roamed across Whitehall – announcing new task forces, initiatives, and incentives – Mr Brown deferred to no one. Mr Blair fixed his grin.
Jonathan Guthrie: Like a bad prawn, the affair is off
A 10th anniversary merits something special. But the business measures proffered in the Budget were as shabby as a bunch of petrol station chrysanthemums.
Boxed in chancellor presents holding Budget
Gordon Brown rounded off his Budget with a plethora of education initiatives, designed to make a big impact, but even the most cursory look at the numbers underpinning the speech tells a very different story, writes Chris Giles.
